If Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are to thwart former President Donald Trump in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, they’ll have to win over key counties that Trump lost in his first White House run.
Republican pollsters and political experts told the Washington Examiner that a possible pathway to stop Trump runs through Johnson County, home to a more moderate wing of the Republican Party, the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids suburbs, along with the rural and evangelical counties in northwest and southeast Iowa.
Those counties mostly bucked Trump during his 2016 presidential run when he wasn’t an incumbent president, handing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) a win during the Iowa caucuses.
But Trump has learned from his past campaign and is banking on an overwhelming win that deters rivals from remaining in the race.
- Why Haley needs to win Johnson County more than DeSantis
Several political experts noted that Johnson County is one of the most important counties to watch on caucus night. The county’s more liberal makeup makes it a good case to see whether DeSantis or Haley can convince Republicans who are seeking a non-Trump candidate to back their campaigns.
“That is the most college-educated county in the whole state. It’s where Iowa City is. The University of Iowa is there,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “But other than Johnson, the only two other counties in the state where a majority of residents are college-educated is Story and Dallas, which are both kind of immediately north and west of Des Moines.”
During the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Trump lost Johnson County, Story County, and Dallas County to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Cruz. They “were in Trump’s 10 Worst counties in Iowa” in 2016, according to Coleman. If DeSantis or Haley wins these counties, it bodes well for their campaigns next week.
Timothy Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa and author of Riding the Caucus Rollercoaster 2020: The Democrats’ Race to Win the Iowa Caucuses, also cited Johnson County, with its high percentage of registered Democrats, as an area for Trump’s rivals to focus on.
“It’s the only county where Democrats have an outright majority of registered voters. But the Republicans tend to be a little more on the liberal side too,” Hagle said. “And I think that’s true for Polk County as well and Story County, where Iowa State University is, Cedar Rapids with Linn County north of Johnson County. They went for Cruz, but Trump was actually in third. Rubio was in second place there.”
Haley has run a more moderate Republican campaign than DeSantis, who has angled for evangelical voters. Her best chances for Iowa county pickups would be in the counties Hagle and Coleman cited.
If Haley were to win these counties, it would make DeSantis’s uphill climb to defeat Trump infinitely harder, as Trump is sure to perform somewhat well with evangelicals, and Haley could box out DeSantis from the moderate wing of the GOP.
“If I were looking at counties, I’d look at those because those are the ones that are maybe the furthest from Trump in 2016,” Hagle continued. “And if they go for Trump in 2024, Trump’s going to have a really good night. Whereas if they go for DeSantis or Haley, that may be a suggestion that it’s going to be a more competitive race than what some people expected.”
2. Northwest and southeast areas of Iowa will test DeSantis’s ground game
Other experts, such as influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Platts, who has endorsed DeSantis along with Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), pointed to the more heavily evangelical counties in northwest and southeast Iowa for a sign of how the night will go.
“I’m gonna look at Sioux County up in northwest Iowa,” Vander Platts said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I’m gonna look at Marion County, which is southeast of Des Moines.”
Similarly, Hagle also cited Sioux County, Lyon County, Osceola County, and O’Brien County in the northwest region of Iowa as a possible harbinger for DeSantis and Haley.
Trump lost all four counties to Cruz in 2016, so “if all of a sudden evangelicals are coming out to vote and voting not for Trump, then that might be something of interest,” Hagle said.
Trump also lost Marion County to Cruz.
But a DeSantis pickup this year could show he has a “very good shot at winning because typically Sioux County, Marion County, they probably would be more Trump-leaning counties, Grundy County as well,” Vander Plaats said. “And to see if DeSantis is competing or leading those counties. If he is, it could be a good night for him.”
3. Rural counties critical to DeSantis’s ground game
John Couvillon, a Louisiana-based pollster and consultant, pointed to the spread of the Republican vote across Iowa for clues as to where the Iowa caucuses could be decided.
“The way I look at the Iowa caucuses is really there’s two parts of it. And that is what’s going to go on in the rural counties versus what’s going to go on in the urban counties,” Couvillon said. “When I looked at Republican active voter registration as of January, half of the registered Republicans live in 12 counties. The other half live in the remaining 87 counties.”
Couvillon described rural counties as places with less than 10,000 registered Republicans. Given Trump’s lead and his selective campaign in urban Iowa, winning rural counties is a must for DeSantis.
Trump currently dominates the primary field at 52.3% support, according to a RealClearPolitics average of Iowa surveys. Haley follows Trump at 16.3%, while DeSantis closely trails behind at 16%.
“If he, DeSantis, wants to have any chance of being competitive in Iowa, to me, his ground game, plus Vander Plaats plus Reynolds, they need to make the rural counties competitive,” Couvillon continued.
4. The campaigns aren’t ruling out any counties
The Trump campaign was succinct when responding to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment on which counties they would be paying attention to. “We’ll be watching every single county,” said spokesman Steven Cheung.
Haley’s campaign pointed to her multiple visits to Iowa as a sign of her success.
“Nikki has held 83 events to date and met with Iowans in every corner of the state,” said spokeswoman AnnMarie Graham-Barnes. “Just this week, she’s holding events from Waukee to Waterloo and Cedar Rapids to Council Bluffs. We’re confident that her efforts will pay off across Iowa.”
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
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Yet DeSantis is banking on his touring all 99 counties in Iowa plus the backing of Reynolds and Vander Plaats to siphon off enough evangelicals to defeat Trump. Haley, meanwhile, has tried to temper expectations of how well she performs in Iowa and is seeking a stronger showing in New Hampshire.
“You have 12 larger counties where if you want to see either DeSantis or even Nikki Haley have a good night, they have to show some dominance in these counties,” Couvillon said, also pointing to the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids area. “How strong or weak Trump does in the rural counties versus what kind of strength, if any, that Haley and/or DeSantis can demonstrate in the larger counties, that to me would be the story of Iowa.”
Samantha-Jo Roth contributed to this story.